US-sponsored militants affiliated with the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have transferred more than 600 relatives of Daesh Takfiri terrorists from the dangerous al-Hawl detention camp in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah to neighboring Iraq.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement on Friday that the Kurdish militants handed over around “620 people, all of whom were relatives of Daesh members” to the Iraqi government.
The men, women and children belonged to 150 families and left the notorious camp on Thursday, an unnamed Kurdish official in northern Syria said.
The camp is located on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in Syria’s energy-rich Hasakah province, where US occupation forces and its allied militants are actively present. Besides the internally displaced, families of Daesh terrorists also reside there.
It houses around 55,000 people, the United Nations reported in June.
According to the official Iraqi News Agency, Iraq should repatriate 500 families in total from al-Hawl camp this year.
The first repatriation of Iraqi Daesh families from the camp, involving around 300 people, took place in May last year.
In early June, Iraq repatriated another 50 Iraqi Daesh Takfiri terrorists.
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign, which also had the support of neighboring Iran.
The terror outfit’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash fresh violence.
Daesh has intensified its terrorist attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the United States assassinated top Iranian anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani and deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha'abi, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, near Baghdad International Airport.
Iraqi anti-terror resistance groups have repeatedly warned Baghdad that the remnants of Daesh active in Syria’s US-occupied east may find unhindered access to the Iraqi border and infiltrate into its western Anbar Province.
This is while the positions of the PMU and its affiliated resistance groups operating against Daesh in the border regions have repeatedly come under attack by the US military over the past years.
Back in April, an Iraqi legislator warned against the return of Daesh Takfiri terrorists and their families from al-Hawl camp, saying their comeback will increase acts of terrorism in the Arab country.
“Terrorist attacks will rise by 30 percent once hundreds of Daesh members are back from al-Hawl camp. Repeated warnings were made last year about their return, especially as the extremists are linked to high-profile militant commanders,” Uday Abdul-Hadi, a lawmaker from the Fatah (Conquest) Alliance in Iraq's parliament, said at the time.
He went on to note that residents of the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala and other regions are strongly opposed to the return of Daesh members from al-Hawl, and have voiced serious concerns about the re-emergence of the Takfiri terrorist group.